Our DrupalCamp Experience from Vienna 2015

Organized in the heart of Europe, DrupalCamp Vienna was the first major conference after the long anticipated launch of Drupal 8. It was an event packed with goodies which gathered hundreds of open source enthusiasts and php developers.

Because with Drupal 8 we are “getting off the island”, many sessions were focused on generic php issues, there were plenty of sessions to choose from and each of them touched on a relevant component of modern web technologies.
The event keynote hosted by Jenny Wong was not your regular cup of tea for a Drupal conference. It set the tone for the conference by introducing the underlying theme, that of bridging communities. From here on the topic spectrum has broadened and made this event only the first occurrence of a new approach that will take open source technologies to the next big step.

Our team arrived there Wednesday, ready to join the Extended Sprints. Călin’s interest in the Rules Module made it pretty clear what beast he’ll be tackling and by the end of it Călin successfully resolved one major issue and helped on the documentation. On the other hand Bogdan had a pretty efficient run, contributing on solving 3 issues on Rules Module and 1 issue on Drupal Core.

After all that coding, it was only natural to go out for a bit sightseeing in beautiful Vienna. We headed towards the Christmas market with the group, just your regular crowd. A couple dozen developers enjoying their punch and discussing Drupal, nothing out of the ordinary. You know how geeks mingle well.

The conference stretched across two days of sessions bringing forward valuable case studies, innovative resolutions, hands-on presentations with real-life examples and interesting discussions between speakers and audience. The presentation topics extended well beyond Drupal and included references on the latest modern technologies and web standards.

For instance, Călin really appreciated the GraphQL presentation, the new open source query language from Facebook which is a frontrunner to becoming ‘the next big thing’. If you are curious to learn more about it, Sebastian Siemssen also posted a Google Hangouts on how GraphQl will work on Drupal 8.

Bogdan on the other hand enjoyed the really interactive session about the development of examiner.com, a good case scenario on how to apply Drupal 8.

Last but not least, let’s not forget about the amazing Drupal community members who joined this event. It was great to see friendly faces and meet new people. The parties were raging, and the special surprise from Acolono, the Drupal Cinema Zapping Night, was something to remember.

All in all, it was a wonderful experience (as expected!) and we look forward to the next Drupal Camp!

Bogdan and Călin came back home with lots of enthusiasm to share. So much so that we’ve started to think about holding a Sprint Day here in Timișoara, Romania. Check out our blog, it’s going to be a new year filled with surprises.